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The Alps continue fairly smoothly into the following related Alpine mountain ranges: the Apennines to the southwest, the Dinarides to the southeast and the Carpathians to the northeast. In the east the Alps are bounded by the Viennese Basin and the Pannonian Basin, where east–west stretching of the crust takes place.
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At places throughout the Alps the European basement was, after being detached of its cover rocks, tectonically uplifted in a late stage of the orogeny. Thus the "external massives" were formed, places where the Hercynian basement rock crops out in large anticlinoria at the southern (or in France eastern) side of the Helvetic zone.
The Penninic thrustfront is a major tectonic thrustfront in the French Alps.The thrustfront moves over a developing decollement horizon, and separates the (internal) high grade metamorphic rocks of the Penninic nappes from the (external) sedimentary rocks and crystalline basement of the Helvetic nappes.
The Alps acted as a geographical barrier to Italy, and the Alps for centuries were permeated with established smuggling routes, known as green line. After World War II, members of the Schutzstaffel that feared prosecution as war criminals , known in modern English only as SS , disappeared into a crowd of refugees . [ 151 ]
In the western Alps the Penninic nappes are more obviously present than in the eastern Alps (in Austria), where they crop out as a narrow band. The name Penninic is derived from the Pennine Alps, an area in which rocks from the Penninic nappes are abundant. Of the three nappe stacks the Penninic nappes have the highest metamorphic grade.
The Alps contain three such stacks, of which the Austroalpine nappes are structurally on top of the other two (meaning they were thrust over the other two). The name Austroalpine means Southern Alpine , because these nappes crop out mainly in the Eastern Alps (the Alps east of the line Lake Constance - Chur – Lake Como ).
In geology, the name "molasse basin" is sometimes also used in a general sense for a synorogenic (formed contemporaneously with the orogen) foreland basin of the type north of the Alps. The basin is the type locality of molasse , a sedimentary sequence of conglomerates and sandstones , material that was removed from the developing mountain ...